“There’s No Ghibli Magic In ‘Earwig and the Witch”s 3D Mess”

A movie so bad, I may need a break from Ghibli for a while. Continue reading →

Review: Mary and the Witch’s Flower, 2018, dir. Hiromasa Yonebayashi

I’m sort of a career goof, and so I have a natural inclination toward characters who are also career goofs. Meaning, there’s more than one reason why I compare Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s Mary and the Witch’s Flower to Harry Potter. There’s the obvious reason – they’re both about schools for young witches! – and there’s the secondary reason, which … Continue reading →

Review: The Red Turtle, 2017, dir. Michaël Dudok de Wit

Surprise: Studio Ghibli made a beautiful movie. Once you’re done collecting your jaw from the floor, you can click this link and zip over to The Playlist and read the review I wrote about Michaël Dudok de Wit’s The Red Turtle, a movie so lovely, minimalist, and thoughtful that it may assuage whatever sociopolitical anxieties you’re wrestling … Continue reading →

Review: Only Yesterday, 1991/2016, dir. Isao Takahata

I’m cheating on the title here, and I know it, but: Only Yesterday, one of the earliest films by Studio Ghibli co-founder and all around genius Isao Takahata, has enjoyed neither a theatrical run nor a home video release here in North America since the film premiered twenty five years ago. (That, of course, doesn’t mean people … Continue reading →